Words on a page that might help me, or you, someday, maybe.

Connecting

Today I spent four hours in the pub connecting with my friends over a couple dozen games of Connect Four. My primary friend group is still the same one that I had through school – we figured out that we left school around this time seven years ago – although now I rarely see them because they have, and we have, all moved out of our home town.

They’re now in Reading or London or Coventry and we’re in Gloucestershire. We still meet up when we can though. Aaron, Laura-Jayne and Chris came to mine and Alice’s house for the evening. We ordered in a Dominos. It was good shit.

When we could eat no more Dominos we walked into town to one of the bars. They’ve got an outdoor, upstairs terrace that we sat on and played Connect Four for hours.

As was expected, I got mad competitive and cocky. Connect Four is the definition of a game at which I should be good – because it requires no physical prowess, only brain power.

We played winner stays on, with the new opponent coming clockwise to the left around the circle. The girls got bored before the boys, so me and Aaron continued playing long after anyone else remained interested.

That’s what we’re like. We’re both competitive, but we’re both very easily entertained by things like that. I could’ve carried on playing until 1am, but Alice eventually shut us down because the sound of the counters hitting the plastic was driving her mad. (Mine and Aaron’s individual play-off ended about 15-2 to me)

I’ve said this before, but I love this group of friends because we can spend months apart but fall straight back into nights like tonight where it’s like nothing has changed.

The only thing that Aaron and I have ever argued about was a card game we played once whilst waiting for an airplane. We both got a bit competitive. I had to go to the bathroom to cool down. I know that he could’ve carried on playing Connect Four until 1am as well.